Old and New—A
Declaration of Intent

"The ones who close the path for peaceful revolution,
at the same time
open the path for violent revolution"—Hugo Chavez

Policies of this website(submission
guidelines):

This
is a moderated website. We will consider your contribution based
on the following criteria, along with the principles spelled out
in the "Old and New" declaration itself:

1)
We welcome the participation of everyone. In that context the
editors are mandated to make sure we do not overprivilege the
contributions of white men.

2)
We share the goal of displacing and dispersing the imperial
bourgeois state power and replacing it with an institutional
reality based on alternative social forces. In other words, we
seek discussion that places itself in a consciously revolutionary
framework.

3)
We will give priority to articles and comments in which the author is
clearly engaged in active listening and a search for
commonalities or convergences, in contrast to those which
primarily restate already well-established views (though
restatements that are particularly clear, or that raise new issues in
the context of a particular conversation, will be given consideration).
The overall goal of our project is not just to recapitulate
pre-established ideas but to transcend them if/when we can in order to
pursue a stronger collective synthesis of revolutionary thought.

4)
We understand that a purely intellectual exchange cannot achieve
the goal outlined in point 3 above. Our intellectual exchange has to be
combined at some point, when we are able to move to the next stage of
this process, with a level of collective practice that can
then feed back on and help to shape the intellectual exchange. In the
meantime, as a step in this direction, we offer links below to
activist-oriented websites which promote goals we believe
in. We will also give priority to written contributions which
offer creative approaches to collective action in addition to
useful thoughts about revolutionary theory and history.

Old and New 2016 forum series in New York. Watch the video:MARCH 2:“Old Left and New Left – Key lessons for Today”
APRIL 13(in three different segments): Here, Here, and Here“New Left to Next Left – Paths for Future Victories”

MAY 22 (video pending)“The
Next Left: Leadership for
Tomorrow”

Can you identify these individuals from
revolutionary herstory and history?

March
2014―The
anticapitalist revolutionary project has been in crisis for some time.
The anticapitalist revolutionary left exists today only in the form of
scattered tiny groups, each competing with all of the others and none
wielding any significant influence in active struggles. A consciously
anti-capitalist mass movement has all but disappeared. Occasionally
phenomena like Tahrir Square or Occupy Wall Street flare up. But even
these fail to pose a meaningful threat to the power of the global
corporate establishment or those state institutions which serve it.

Yet
there remains a great legacy of past experience, along with a wide
range of current struggles (inspired by national self-determination,
the rights of indigenous peoples, gender and sexual liberation,
communism, anarchism, radical green consciousness, prison abolition,
and more) that have helped shape the consciousness of multiple
generations and will continue to do so, stimulating ideological
discussions and developing thousands of conscious revolutionaries.

So even if
anti-capitalist revolution might seem like something off in the
distance to many activists, we believe there are prospects of leftist
renewal that could transform this goal into something far more
credible once again.

2) Joint declaration

We
remain among those who continue to recognize the need to overthrow
capitalism and create an egalitarian world. The crisis of species
survival (including our own species), brought about by human
destruction of our planet's ecology, some elements of which are now
acknowledged even by capitalists themselves, has emerged in recent decades to compound the
previous imperative for
revolutionary change.

But
there seems to be a strong, perhaps even overwhelming, tendency for the
anti-capitalist/revolutionary left to divide into two camps:

●those
who declare that a new world reality changes everything todayand
that the revolutionary project must therefore be invented anew;

●those who declare
that nothing fundamental has changed about capitalism and exploitation,
that the laws of social development and revolution therefore remain
unchanged as well.

In our judgment
the basic premise of each camp is unassailable. The task is to
reconcile them.

In our experience,
however, there seem to be very few who are willing to acknowledge and
act on both of these truths at the same time. If they affirm one it is
considered an exclusive and sufficient truth, to be used as a bludgeon
against those who embrace the other. This is a false counterposition,
however, which severely undermines our ability to generate the kind of
revolutionary project humanity needs today.

The
most central problem facing those presently seeking revolutionary
social change is one that has been
confronted repeatedly during the last century and a half: A
mass movement can spontaneously arise to challenge the
current political regime, creating the social basis for a
meaningful alternative. But if no alternative power is actually put in
place, if the old state power is not dispersed, the previous social
relationships inevitably re-establish themselves, perhaps using
different political forms―the problem in South Africa and Egypt, for example. Whether
and how to respond to this truth was a key element in the
differentiation of diverse ideological trends during the previous
century. It remains as a reality that we have to respond to today.

At the same time everything now exists in a context
which is entirely different from what it was during most of the last century―ranging
from the relationship between various potentially revolutionary social
forces to the strength of imperialism and the destruction of our planet's biosphere. We must deal
in a way that is completely new with questions that did not exist for,
or (perhaps better) were never properly acknowledged by,
revolutionaries during the 19thand 20th centuries, realities such as patriarchy,
heteronormativity, social reproduction in addition to wage labor as a
key element in the creation and survival of capitalism, etc. The
finite nature of planet earth is a reality which always existed, but
until very recently egalitarian projects did not even begin to consider
how this must affect our vision of what revolutionary change is going
to look like.

One
very significant difficulty has been the development, in many sectors
of the revolutionary left, of theories and proposals for struggle that
root themselves almost exclusively in a European experience and/or
discourse. More schematic versions of Marxism are, clearly, among these
problematic ideologies. (Some would argue that Marxism as a whole is
inevitably flawed in this way.) But Marxism is not alone in suffering
from such tendencies.

There
is a rich history and tradition, going back to the earliest days of
resistance against colonial conquest in the Americas, in Africa, and in
Asia. Further, it should be obvious that the pre-conquest cultures of
these continents can provide us with essential insights into the kinds
of social relationships a modern-day egalitarian society must strive
for, thereby providing a concrete demonstration that "another world is
possible."

Signers and supporters of this statement identify with
more than one historical tradition. Something we share in common,
however, is an understanding that whatever tradition or trend each of
us might identify with, there are aspects of its ideology which must
inevitably be discarded as historical relics at the same time that
other aspects need to be affirmed and carried with us into the future.
Our objective in this conversation is to figure out
which is which―based on a broader
collective assessment of history than any one current can achieve by
itself, combined with present-day experience.

In our search for a new synthesis of revolutionary
thought we consider it essential, therefore, to consider the insights
that can be provided by a wide range of historical and contemporary
trends, including anarcho-communists, autonomists, council communists,
ecofeminists, and those who are or have been engaged in
revolutionary-nationalist or indigenous struggles―in addition
to individuals or groups who might
self-identify as Leninists and traditional Marxists. The only
requirement we insist on is that the ideology or trend in question
represent a genuine quest for human liberation through social
revolution.

The
primary goal of this declaration is to find others who are willing and
able to act on this need for both a continuity of revolutionary
understanding and a revolution in that understanding at one and the
same time, referencing a wide range of ideological/theoretical inputs
in order to achieve that goal, so we can begin to gather ourselves
together into a coherent and meaningful political project. We
recognize that this is a global need, and we do not exclude the
possibility of individuals from other countries participating in the
process we have begun. But for now it is a big enough task to try to
gather together individuals from across the USA, so that is where our
attention will be focused. Such a
project needs to start with the affirmation of certain fundamentals,
implied above but which we make explicit in closing:

a)
We must be open to a reconsideration of old ideas, including those
which may, in fact, turn out to be prejudices flowing from the
ideological dominance of Marxism as the prevailing (and for some the
only possible) revolutionary paradigm for the last century and a half.
Obviously those who still identify as Marxists are welcome to
contribute their ideas and thoughts to this process, as are all others.
But they should do so understanding that the assumptions made
historically by self-identified Marxists are not necessarily
shared by everyone engaged in the present conversation.

b)
At the same time we do agree that there can be no revolutionary
practice without revolutionary theory. We require a deep and meaningful
theoretical conversation in order to sort through the relationship
between the old problems and the new ones, establishing in this way
common reference points that might constitute the basis for a renewal
of the revolutionary movement.

c)
There is, it should be obvious, no great leader who will resolve all
questions for us. We reject any form of sectarian or
cult-based organization (the belief that my group and my group alone
has a franchise on “the truth”) along with the
“struggle for hegemony”
by any one current―over other political forces or over the mass
movement. There may come a time when revolutionaries in the USA will
need to struggle for hegemony again. Whether and when this might be
appropriate in the future is one conversation we ought to have.
But now is, clearly, not that time. Our project
does not seek to be in competition with existing groups. We invite
participation by members of such existing left groups and desire close
friendly relations with any group that is willing to establish such a
relationship with us.

d) To reach the collective solution we
seek will, therefore, require that we listen to each other with
respect―even (especially) when at first we seem to be quite far apart
in our assessments or conclusions. The search for commonalities and points of
convergence should have at least an equal weight in our practice with the struggle
over our differences.

We also welcome
comments about our declaration. These comments will be posted in this
space―after review to be sure they meet the four basic criteria
just cited. We plan to make other discussions available on a similar
basis.

During our initial
work to develop the "Old and New" declaration we attempted to include,
in part 1, some historical background. Discussion went through several
rounds as we sought language that might represent a consensus.
But it turned out to be impossible and we abandoned the
attempt. Still, our conversation did produce some useful
insights. It seems appropriate, therefore, to continue an
exploration of the relevant questions as part of the discussion we hope
to promote through this website.

Below find a link to the last
draft of the historical background text, which is then followed
by a comment suggesting what some of the difficulties
were as we attempted to reach a collective understanding. It seems
clear that we are dealing here with multiple layers of
truth working both with and against one another, relating
in ways that are interesting, important, and extremely complex. We
believe that this exchange points to the kind
of critique we should be open to as we seek a new
revolutionary paradigm.

The River Will Not TestifyConnecticut River
Turners Falls, Massachusetts, 1999

The
river’s belly swirls shards of bone gnawed by water.
The river is deaf after centuries of pummeling the rocks.
The river thrashes all night with the lightning of lunatic visions.
The river strangles on the dam, hissing at the stone eagles
that watch with stone eyes from the bridge.
Concrete stops the river’s tongue at Turners Falls.

The river
cannot testify to all the names:
Peskeomskut, gathering place at the falls;
Sokoki, Nipmuck, Pocumtuck, many nations, many hands
that speared the flapping salmon from the rocks,
stitched the strips of white birch into wigwams.
So Reverend Mr. Russell wrote to the Council of War:They
dwell at the Falls a considerable number, yet
most of them old men, women and children. The Lord calls us
to make some trial which may be done against them.

The river
cannot testify of May 19, 1676.
The river’s face was painted blue at daybreak.
Captain Turner’s men, Puritans sniffing with beards
and flintlock muzzles, slipped between the wigwams
ghostly as the smoke from drying fish.
Their muskets lifted up the flaps of bark;
their furious God roared from every musket’s mouth.
The sleepers drenched in rivers sun-red like the salmon,
and a wailing rose with the mist from the skin of the river.

The river cannot testify about canoes
skidding
over the falls, their ribs in splinters, or swimmers
hammering their skulls against the rocks,
or bullets hammering the rocks and skulls,
or Captain Holyoke’s sword lopping the branches
of grandfathers into the water, or Bardwell
counting the corpses vomited by the white cascade.
And Reverend Mr. Mather wrote:The
river swept them away, that ancient river, oh my soul.

The river
cannot testify to who began the rumor:
a thousand Indians, someone yelled, a thousand Indians approaching;
so when a few dozen warriors read the smoke from gutted wigwams
and splashed across the river, the conquerors fled,
shrieking at the green demons that whipped their eyes
and snatched their ankles as they stumbled through the forest.

The river
cannot testify to say what warrior’s musket
shot Captain Turner, the ball of lead thudding
between shoulder blades, flipped from his horse
and dragged off by the water to sink in a halo of blood.
His name christened the falls, the town, the granite monument
that says: destroyed three hundred Indians at this
place.One day a fisherman
would unearth shinbones
of Indians by the falls, seven skeletons
and each one seven feet tall, he declared.

Centuries
gone, the fishing boats sucked over the dam,
the tendons of the bridge ripped out in the flood,
the children leaning too far and abducted by the current:
all as withered leaves to the river.
The lumber company fire that smothered the night watchman,
the cotton mill and the needles of brown lung,
the knife factory bricked shut during the depression:
all mosquito-hum and glimmer of porchlight to the river.
The Horse Thief Detecting Society that never caught a thief,
The German Military Band flourishing trombones,
The order of Scalpers with fraternity war whoops,
The American Legion dinners beery against communism,
The Indians galloping undefeated onto the high school football field:
all like the glitter of fish to the river.

Centuries
from now, at this place,
when chimneys are the shadows of monsters in the river,
when collapsed spires are haunted by crows,
when graves are plowed to harvest the bones
for aphrodisiacs and trinkets,
when the monuments of war have cracked
into hieroglyphics no one can read,
when the rain sizzles with a nameless poison,
when the current drunk on its own dark liquor
storms through the crumbling of the dam,
the river will not testify of Turners Falls,
for the river has swept them away, oh my soul.

a new black
arts movementNew
York
City Campaign to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz
Resistance in Brooklyn (My organization would like to endorse. Endorsing
organizations will be consulted and asked for input on policy
decisions.)

"I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a
thousand more if only they knew they were slaves"—Harriet Tubman